Tag Archives: Gardens

Hard to say if this is an unusually buoyant time for courgettes or this is the norm. Everyone has a recipe, and people who profess not to be gardeners are growing courgettes and holding forth on what to stuff the blossoms with, and what size an ideal courgette should be (small). I was given a bag of courgettes by French-friend-Monique, and they were on the large side, almost marrows, though when I cooked them they didn’t become the sloppy, watery mess cooked marrows are famous for. They actually tasted of something but with big gangster-like seeds. I followed French-friend-Monique’s recipe for soup, which was so easy and lacking in peril of any kind that I kept asking her the same thing – is that it? – because being French I thought it would be difficult but taste very good in the end. Her instructions, repeated for my benefit, were to “put them in water with a stock cube and throw in some cheese triangles.”

She gave me two triangles and the soup was delicious, and the next night I put in two blobs of goat’s cheese, and I think that is the soup’s secret. I also added some ‘umami paste’ that was being sold off cheap at the supermarket because reportedly no one knew what they were buying. It is in fact a mixture of anchovy, olive, parmesan, and other dark and yeasty backnotes, but you are essentially buying flavour; a bit like buying a jar called ‘hope’ or ‘rumour’. A friend who tried it couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was she liked, the soup a tease, like the boy at school you fancied who turned out to be made of nothing, but who made your life a merry hell before you realized. A bit like that.

But you don’t want a recipe for soup. And it’s hardly, barely a recipe at that (I did in fact, unbeknownst to Monique, sweat the courgettes in some butter and olive oil with some garlic before adding the water, cooking it gently for 20 minutes and then whizzing in a blender with the soft cheese, because I couldn’t bear not to, but this is the Michelin starred version).

I made courgette and potato rosti – otherwise known as patties, polpette or even, and this might just be in my house, rissoles – and they came by way of a rather recalcitrant man in a tight vest who was weeding his plot in a walled garden I happened to be in the other day. The walled garden was spectacular; full of tall wavy bolting lettuces that made me think of Rapunzel, wigwams of fussy frilly sweet peas with their butterfly flowers, darkly mottled pears against one wall and espaliered plums on the other, covered in netting, which somehow made me think of bras. In the middle was this man, bending to fill his trug with slim purple beans.

At first he seemed friendly. “We’re just admiring the garden,” we said by way of introduction, because it was in fact private property, in the grounds of an old house, a retreat of sorts, but the gate had been open and so we had sidled in. “Of course, yeah,” he said and started to peel the drying sheafs off his corn cobs. “I like your courgettes,” I said because we were standing right by a strange serpent-like mass of them blooming up from the ground; blossoms yellow as butter reached out from the sides, and yellow and green snakes of the vegetable slithered over the ground.

“Yeah,” he said, or something like that. And I told him about my marrow-like courgettes from French-friend-Monique, and he said big was bad and did we have an allotment? No, no garden, mum said. No garden since 1976. That’s why she loved coming here, she was thinking of asking if there was a plot to spare. And then we started talking about what we could do with the courgettes, and he reeled off a list while he threw his corn into the trug and carried on peeling away at the next cob – “there’s courgette bread, courgette cake, courgette rosti, courgette soup, sweat them down with a bit of oil and garlic etc.” – and as he went on I decided I didn’t like him. It was just a feeling.

If this had been Monique she would have slipped us a few courgettes and thrust the blossoms in a bag with a flap of her hands as if it hadn’t happened. Not because I was expecting him to – but because I knew he was the kind of person who wouldn’t. “It was nice to meet you, enjoy your harvesting,” I said and moved away. He bent over his trug and threw in the corn with another, bleaker, “Yeah”.

And as we left we saw, right by the mottled pears, a trench of unused, overgrown spartan earth; a plot. That gave us ideas. Which we kept to ourselves until we left the grounds. And then we schemed and schemed and schemed away.

The idea with rosti is to grate cooked potato with – in this case – raw courgette and then fry in a little olive oil and butter until it looks like a golden haystack. I was taken aback by the sheer amount of juice the courgette extruded. I dealt with this by squeezing the (considerable) liquid out of the grated courgette using a tea towel before adding it to the potato. The rosti were light and subtle, grassy-green and fresh-tasting and I found dusting them lightly in flour before frying helped counteract the dampness. I ate mine with horseradish and a poached egg.

Serves 4

200-250g waxy new potatoes, boiled in skin, cooled then grated

1 large or 2 small courgettes

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 clove of garlic, crushed and finely chopped

flour

2-3 tbs vegetable oil for frying

A couple of good knobs of butter

Grate the unpeeled courgettes using a cheese grater or something similar and then squeeze out the liquid through a clean tea towel. Add the grated courgette to the cooled and grated – and unskinned – potato. Mix well and season. I add the garlic here; I know this won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I think it adds to the heady freshness. Heat a non-stick blini or frying pan with a glug of oil. Add balls of the courgette and potato mixture dipped in flour to the pan once the oil is shimmering, press the mixture down a little with a spatula and cook for about 2-3 minutes until brown and crisp. Flip them over and add a little butter to the pan and cook for a similar amount of time. Serve with a poached or fried egg and a dollop of horseradish.